Update 4/29/11

Beside all the new hand-ons/preview being released since yesterday, our friday update is the

Sith Warrior character progression video
and
blog on UI

azarhal wrote:

Beside all the new hand-ons/preview being released since yesterday, our friday update is the

Sith Warrior character progression video
and
blog on UI

After that video Mongo might have to go Marauder...

BW sure makes the Darkside appealing.

http://darthhater.com/media/gallery/42911-friday-update-working-dissection/ is really some good stuff, cybertech crafting picture looks great.

/yawn on official update.

Third party releases were a bit more interesting

Some people started complaining about having only 48 hotbar slots in TOR...here is the answer they got:

Quote :

Originally Posted by GeorgZoeller
"Health Potions. Mana Potions? Meesa not understand."

Seriously guys. We are making Star Wars: The Old Republic, not some other game that has mana potions. (No, we don't have 'Force Potions' or Midichlorian infusions, that'd be rather weird.)

I know it's easy to compare this game to other MMOs you know, but still, we're making a different game, not a clone of another MMO.

There are different mechanics (such as companions with their own bars or cover), different numbers of abilities, skills, usable items, different UI mechanics and options, etc - so taking a number of slots on quickbars from one game and translating it onto our game without taking these factors into account is a bit premature at best.

In short: We'll give you enough hotbar space to play Star Wars: The Old Republic, but we can't guarantee you'll have enough space to put your leftover healing and mana potions from another game onto it.

People also seem pretty polarized about the lack of 3rd party add-on support.

What does everyone think of that?

Kai-Sun wrote:

People also seem pretty polarized about the lack of 3rd party add-on support.

What does everyone think of that?

Even though I used dbm, recount, bartender, and alot others for WoW, I think it will be nice to start Tor "clean".
Last I was on WoW, it never gave to much wiggle room for customization other then using addons.
DCU not worth the mention, and Rift when I was in beta gave alot more customizing options, suprisingly WoW still hasnt picked up on from reading patch notes. So I' am interested in seeing available UI, & customization options ToR has to offer at the get go. All about the immersion, going to take my time nice and slow, I will worry about number crunching min/max game when I get to max level...maybe

Kai-Sun wrote:

People also seem pretty polarized about the lack of 3rd party add-on support.

What does everyone think of that?

I'm cautiously optimistic.

There are already providing the core elements of what I need to figure out my characters (like an approximation of recount for WoW). Therefore I believe the game will be quite "playable". I don't like a thousand people arguing "but this seemed to work better for me, you should do it my way 'cause I know my way works". I'm an engineer irl, I like hard numbers to work with. There's still plenty of room for circumstances to mess with "the perfect build" which inevitably leads to variation anyway (and that's a very good thing). I've seen people try to play that "perfect build" and do very poorly, then switch to the second best build and do equally well. At the same time I like to sit down and puzzle out how things work and what directions will be functional.

If they block things like DBM, it will increase the difficulty but it will do so mostly be increasing situational awareness. I personally think that it will be good to go back paying attention to the game rather than the interface. One of my frustrations as a healer was never getting to see the fights. Hopefully this signals a move in a better direction.

I don't care for DBM type mods. I like to play the game not hit buttons when I'm instructed to do so. I know people will say if you don't like them don't use them, but for some groups they become compulsory.

Things like DBM affect how much freedom Devs have to increase challenge in the game. They reduce the number of ways a Dev can generate a challenging encounter because they now have to consider that everything on a timer will be perfectly measured off and alerted.

Admittedly I don't like micro-spell effects or having to read my chat box to spot the warnings bosses are shouting either. I personally thing the trick (for a Dev) is to make what's going on easily visible in the playing field while still providing complexity.

Man o man the armor looks sick on the "final avatar's"!!! I dig the "spikes" on the Marauder!